


On The Edge Of Familiar

by Insert_Creative_Name_Here



Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt, Gen, M/M, Mind Control, and your purge troopers, but they have like three lines each, i just threw one in and hoped it was fine, imagine being able to write fight scenes lmao, it's just a nosebleed but better safe than sorry, just a warning there's a bit of blood near the end, no beta we die like palpatine deserves to, the rebels characters are probably ooc im sorry, there's so many different classes of stormtrooper it's ridiculous, you got your death troopers, your dark troopers, your shadow troopers (completely different)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:16:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28744596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insert_Creative_Name_Here/pseuds/Insert_Creative_Name_Here
Summary: Rex hates the Empire. Of course he does. It ruined his life in every way. It took his General and his Commander, left him alone and broken and on the run with no purpose in life.It took his brothers. Six million brothers, all reduced to nothing but empty shells.He has Wolffe and Gregor and The Bad Batch, and it's enough. It has to be. But there's not much Rex wouldn't give to spend one more day, one more minute with Fives, or Jesse, or Bly, or Cody.He'd give anything to see them again.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & CT-7567 | Rex, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 158





	On The Edge Of Familiar

**Author's Note:**

> I had to get this out before The Bad Batch does its inevitable version. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I haven't watched Rebels yet. Feel free to yell at me in the comments if they're ooc and I'll fix it once I've watched it.
> 
> Mando'a translations in the end notes.

It starts on one of their routine supply missions - or maybe that's just when Rex first notices it. 

The crew of the _Ghost_ encounters some resistance on their way off of the moon they’re on - Antar 4, if Rex remembers correctly - but it’s normal, at this point. Rex and Sabine blast stormtroopers from behind cover, Kanan and Ezra do their _jetti_ thing, and Zeb throws stormtroopers at each other. All the while, Hera’s yelling at them to get back to the ship. A completely unremarkable supply run, except -

Rex could swear he sees the shadowy figure of a person in armor watching the fight. They’re behind the stormtroopers, probably on the Imperial's side, since they’re not shooting the stormtroopers, but they’re not shooting at the _Ghost_ crew either.

  


In fact, they’re not doing _anything_. Just standing there. Watching. The figure is little more than a shadow, but Rex is struck by the odd feeling that if he could just get a little closer, see the figure face-to-helmet, then something would click. There’s nothing distinctive about them, but _something_ about them is so familiar, just _barely_ out of his mind’s reach, and Rex wants to _scream_.

  


Then a blaster bolt flies an inch from his head, and Rex abruptly remembers that he’s in the middle of a shootout. He tightens his grip on his blasters, firing off two clean shots that strike . He'll investigate later.

  


Eventually, the firing ceases. All of the stormtroopers are either dead or unconscious, so they gather up their stolen supplies and make their way to where Hera had parked the _Ghost_. Rex looks at where the figure had been, but it’s gone.

  


Interesting.

  


He brings it up to the other rebels when they arrive back on Atollon, but without a description more detailed than 'a shadowy figure in armor,' they don't get anywhere on identifying it. They agree to keep an eye out for it, in case the figure is a part of some new Imperial scheme, but no one sees it for months.

Until Rex sees it again.

* * *

  


The _Ghost_ is on another supply run, on Eiradu this time. They manage to get in and out without encountering any resistance, which isn't something that happens very often.

They've just lifted off of the ground to leave when Rex looks out the cockpit and sees someone. It's a stormtrooper in all black armor, not the specialized armor of a death trooper, just black stormtrooper armor. They're looking directly at the _Ghost_ , and Rex's blood runs cold.

  


"Kanan," he says. "Do you see that stormtrooper?"

  


Kanan looks out of the cockpit. "Is that a death trooper?”

  


"I don't think so," Rex says. "Their armor doesn't look like a death trooper's. I think it's something else."

  


They watch the trooper fade from view as the _Ghost_ leaves the ground and then the planet behind.

  


"We should tell Hera," Kanan says. Rex nods.

  


They do, and then they search the _Ghost_ top-to-bottom for trackers, remote detonators, listening devices, anything that the trooper could have planted in order to track or destroy them. Kanan and Rex tear apart their shared room. Sabine goes through her supply of re-painted stormtrooper helmets. Zeb searches his and Ezra’s room while Ezra searches the cockpit. Hera and Chopper search though nooks and crannies that Rex didn’t even know existed. Nonetheless, they come up empty handed. It’s implausible that this trooper would find their ship, watch them fly off of the planet, and not do anything about it; but that’s apparently what happened.

  


They tell the other rebels about it again, back on Atollon, but it's shoved to the back burner when Thrawn discovers where they're hiding. It's not because of the trooper. Kallus claims that Thrawn had discovered where they were hiding all on his own.

  


Rex knows, somehow, that the trooper he saw on Eiradu and the figure on Antar 4 are one and the same. One was little more than a shadow and the other was hidden beneath a black helmet, but Rex's instincts tell him that they're the same. Just like his instincts tell him that he knows them.

  


But they're not a death trooper. He knows that too. They're something else, something that he's never heard of.

  


There's not a lot of ways for someone outside the Empire to know anything about its inner workings. There's _definitely_ not any way for anyone who isn't part of the Empire to learn about their probably top-secret pack of black-armored stormtroopers. Luckily, Rex doesn't need to go that far to find someone who used to be inside the Empire.

  


Kallus is still mistrusted by half the Rebellion - for good reason, even though Rex can tell that he really _has_ changed - so Rex doesn't feel bad about giving him a small chance to prove himself.

  


Once the Atollon rebels get settled on Yavin 4, Rex goes searching for Kallus. He’s a hard man to find. Kallus is directly responsible for a good portion of the hardships suffered by the people on the base, so he’s developed a habit of spending his downtime as far away from people as he can.

  


Rex checks all of Kallus’ usual spots - his and Zeb’s bunks, the Intelligence offices, the woods, the top of one of the nearby ruins - but he isn’t there.

  


It’s mid afternoon by this point, so Rex decides to grab some food at the mess hall before resuming his search.

  


It was the right decision, he realizes when he walks in, because Kallus is sitting at the _Ghost’s_ usual table when Rex walks in. Zeb’s sitting across from Kallus. He must have dragged him out of the Intelligence office.

  


"Kallus," he says as he approaches the table. Kallus lifts his head in acknowledgement. "I have a question for you. When you were in the Empire, did you ever see a stormtrooper with black armor? Not a death trooper, not with customized armor, just a stormtrooper, but with black armor instead of white."

  


Kallus pauses for a second, thinking. "You're talking about purge troopers. I've never actually seen one, most of them have been out of service for a while now. Why, have you seen one?"

  


Rex nods. "Twice, actually. Once on Antar 4, and once on Eiradu. It was the same one."

  


"And they let you go?"

  


"Yeah. It looked like they were just observing us - the whole _Ghost_ crew. Do you know anything about them?"

  


"Only rumors. They were precursors to the death troopers, but have been mostly phased out. There's only one or two left, as far as I know. They're supposedly some of the most skilled troopers in the Imperial army, but no one is ever promoted to a purge trooper. They're rarely given missions anymore, but they always complete the ones they are given. And they never speak."

  


Rex nods slowly, and sits down across from Kallus. "There used to be more of them?"

  


"Yes. They were more common during the beginning of the Empire. Rumor has it that most of them stopped running missions around the same time. I assume that means they died, since it was almost a decade ago, but I don't know for sure."

  


A sickening feeling starts to take hold in Rex's stomach. "Thanks," he says anyway, desperately trying to stay in the moment. "That's actually very helpful. Can you think of anything else?" _Please don't say anything else,_ he thinks. _Please don't say what I think you're going to._

  


Kallus thinks for a moment, opens his mouth, then closes it again. He glances at Zeb for a second, then meets Rex's eyes. "Supposedly, and I do not know how true this is, but supposedly, they're all clones."

  


Oh no.

  


Oh _shit_.

* * *

  


They're on Fondor a week later, attacking an Imperial manufacturing plant, and Rex has shoved the purge trooper revelation to the back of his mind. If the Rebellion could take out this plant, the Empire would lose a major source of Star Destroyers and other ships. That's all he needs to focus on, for now. It’s supposedly a heavily guarded area. The security on the plant is supposed to be some of the best in the Empire.

  


Which makes the complete lack of anything even remotely security-related very suspicious.

  


Rex is with the _Ghost_ crew, again. They'd had plenty of trouble getting _in_ to the plant, sure, and had encountered stormtroopers near the entrance. But here? There's no one but them.

  


It's _weird_ , and Rex isn't a hundred percent sure that they're not being led into a trap, but Kanan keeps saying that the Force wants them to continue the way they're going. So they do.

  


They make their way into a meeting room, although it seems to have been repurposed for storage. Rex can hear the sound of blaster fire through the walls, but it's from far away in the compound. There's no stormtroopers in their immediate vicinity, even though they have two _jetti_ in their group.

  


"We should leave," Rex says. "This feels wrong." He purposely doesn't say _I have a bad feeling about this_. If he learned one thing from the Clone Wars, it's that _nothing_ good ever came from saying that phrase.

  


"The Force led us here, Rex. We need to be here," Ezra says.

  


"I'm with Rex," Sabine says. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

  


Force. _Kriffing_. Damnit. It didn't even matter anyway. Someone _always_ says it. They're karked.

  


Zeb's ears twitch. "Did you guys hear that?"

  


"Hear what?" Hera asks.

  


Zeb looks at a dark elevated platform on the far side of the room. "Sounded like someone was walking up there."

  


"I don't like this," Sabine says. "Why does the Force want us here?"

  


Kanan opens his mouth to respond, but a shot rings out from the platform across the room. Ezra moves to deflect it, but when it hits his lightsaber, it doesn't get redirected. Instead, it explodes, and Ezra gasps in pain, stumbling backwards. Rex sees blood staining the front of his tunic.

  


It wasn't a blaster bolt, Rex realizes. It was a slugthrower. A weapon that Mandalorians use _specifically_ for fighting _jetti_. Whoever fired that shot knew they were coming.

  


Sabine rushes over to Ezra just as a volley of blaster fire erupts from the platform, pinpoint accurate shots that slam into the gaps between Sabine's armor plates. She falls to the ground. Hera and Zeb dive behind cover, returning fire as best they can, and Kanan levitates Sabine and Ezra to safety with one hand while deflecting blaster bolts with the other. Rex shoots at the seemingly empty platform.

  


A shot hits his glove where he's gripping one of his blasters. He swears and drops it on instinct, then darts behind a crate of supplies as a burst of blaster fire comes his way. Another shot glances off of his armor, and he stumbles to the ground - but his armor holds up. It always does.

  


Rex peeks around the crate he's hiding behind in time to see a figure jump down from the platform. It's someone in black stormtrooper armor - the purge trooper. They're holding a slugthrower, and they fire off two rounds at Kanan as soon as they hit the ground. Kanan throws himself to the side and then leaps forward, slashing with his lightsaber. Rex's heart stops for a second, because _that's a clone, that could be someone he knew_ , before he sees that Kanan just cut the slugthrower in half.

  


"Don't kill them," he yells. "Please."

  


"What?" Kanan shouts. " _Why?_ "

  


"That's a clone. I can get through to them. I know I can."

  


"Are you serious?" Hera asks.

  


"He's serious," Zeb says. "And he's right. That's a clone."

  


Right, Zeb was there for Rex's conversation with Kallus. He's got an ally in this situation, that's good.

  


"I'll try my best," Kanan shouts, and Rex sees the trooper pull out a vibroblade, advancing on him. They dodge his lightsaber strikes - all to heavily armored parts of their body, all meant to disable, not kill - with the ease of someone who'd spent years doing it, even though no one's seen a Jedi other than Kanan, Ezra, or Ahsoka for almost two decades.

  


The trooper slashes at Kanan, and when he lifts his saber to deflect the blade, they kick him in the arm. Rex hears a sickening _crack_ as Kanan's arm breaks, and he drops the lightsaber. The trooper kicks him in the chest, and he goes flying across the room into a crate. They pull out a blaster and walk forward. The movement is all _vod_ , and the way they hold their blaster and vibroblade practically _screams_ command class.

  


That confirms it with Rex. This is a clone.

  


The thought of his _vod’e_ under the control of the Emperor for so long with no thoughts of their own makes Rex want to track the _hut'uun_ down and stab him with his own lightsaber. The thought that this specific brother is command class, probably someone that Rex knew personally is enough to burn through all of his hesitations and make him move.

  


He gets up from behind his crate and, quietly and quickly as he can in his sixty-year-old body, makes his way across the room. Then, in a moment of pure impulse and rage, he punches the trooper in the head right as he's about to shoot Kanan.

  


It doesn't do anything to the trooper. It does, however, redirect their attention onto Rex. Great.

  


He backs up a couple of feet and holds his hands up in the universal sign for _surrender_.

  


"Don't shoot, trooper," he says, in what he hopes is a placating voice.

  


It's not. The trooper levels their blaster at him.

  


"Trooper. Do. Not. Fire."

  


The trooper's hands remain still on their blaster.

  


"I'm going to remove my helmet," Rex says, moving slowly to disengage the seal of his bucket. He lifts it off his head. "See? I'm one of you. We're brothers."

  


The trooper siffens minutely at the sight of Rex's face. If he was anyone else, if he wasn't a clone, he wouldn't have noticed it.

  


"CT-7567, you have been discovered assisting the Jedi traitors, in direct violation of Order 66," the trooper says. An image of Jesse robotically reciting similar words all those years ago rises uninvited to the front of Rex's mind. He shoves it back down. The trooper continues, "You are a traitor to the Republic and an enemy to the Empire. You will be executed."

  


Kriff.

  


They fire, but Rex is already on the move. The blaster bolt slams into the wall next to his head.

  


"I was hoping it wouldn't come to this," he grumbles. He needs to get the trooper's helmet off, so he can see if he recognizes the. Personal stories, meaningful experiences, and things like those are what breaks the chip's control over a _vod_. That was something he'd learned while rescuing Wolffe - Gregor's chip had never fully activated, thanks to the amnesia.

  


Rex needs to know this trooper's name, their life. He's not entirely sure if he could live with the answer, if it's someone he knows. If it's someone he cares about.

  


Then the trooper shoots at him again, and Rex snaps into battle mode.

  


First priority - get rid of their blasters. There's a lot more variables in a firefight, and Rex only has one blaster of his own right now. He's good at hand-to-hand, he'd been trained by some of the best in the entire GAR, so unless this trooper is one of a very specific group of brothers, Rex could probably take them.

  


Second priority - take off their helmet. He needs their blasters gone first, though, so this goes on the back burner, for a bit.

  


Third priority - knock them out if he needs to. He can remove their chip while they're unconscious - Ahsoka had done it to him - but something tells him that knocking them out isn't going to be so easy, and he doesn’t want to risk doing something to their mind.

  


Rex pulls out his remaining blaster and starts firing. He's aiming for the trooper's hands while the trooper is aiming for his. It's a weird game of trying to disarm each other from ten feet away for a couple of seconds, until the trooper shoots a bolt directly at Rex's visor, forcing him to dive to the side and tuck into a roll. When he gets up, the trooper is right in front of him, throwing a punch. Rex just barely manages to roll out of the way, but manages to grab one of their blasters on the way up - a rifle, which he promptly tosses to Zeb with a hissed " _don't use it._ "

  


The trooper's fighting style is familiar, even beyond the basic GAR moves that had been incorporated into the stormtrooper training regiment. It's just ever so slightly off, corrupted by the Empire in such small ways so that Rex is _absolutely_ certain that he knows this _vod_ , but can't determine who it actually is.

  


The trooper throws a series of quick punches into Rex's torso - which he has no choice but to take - and follows it up with a kick. Rex takes a risk and catches their foot, flipping them and pinning them to the ground for only a moment before they start to fight him off. He knows that they'll be able to, he's a little out of practice, so he uses the precious few seconds he has to punch the trooper in the neck and steal their remaining blaster, throwing it to Hera with the same warning not to use it. Then they buck him off, and Rex retreats to the other side of the room. Kanan is gone from the crate where he'd been thrown, he realizes. Hera and Zeb must have dragged him to safety.

  


The trooper is coming at him _again_ , and Rex is almost jealous of their stamina. As command class, they've got to be older than him, but they show no signs of slowing down, while Rex is already starting to tire. He hasn't had a fight this intense in years, not since the Clone Wars.

  


He blocks the trooper's punches and knees them in the kidney in retaliation. Rex grabs their head, trying to disengage the seal of their helmet, but they smack his hands away.

  


Okay. New priorities. Disengage the seal, and _then_ get the helmet off. One at a time.

  


While the trooper catches their breath, Rex darts behind them and wraps an elbow around their throat. "Sorry about this," he says, fumbling for the seal. He hears it _click_ , and the trooper freezes for a second before throwing their full weight backwards to knock Rex to the ground. They roll off of him before taking a few hasty steps backwards, their hand flying to the back of their head.

  


Interesting. They want to re-engage the seal. Rex can't let them do that. He follows them up and charges after them, dodges the trooper's desperate punch, and swings up, hitting them in the jaw at the right angle to knock the helmet off of their head.

  


They stumble backwards into a corner of the room, and Rex can already recognize the features of what used to be the most common face in the galaxy - his own.

  


"Trooper," he says. "Look at me."

  


They take a few heaving breaths as they stand up straight and glare at him. Rex studies their face, ready to have to shift through half-buried memories of different brothers, sisters, and siblings in order to identify them - but curled around the trooper's left eye is a scar that Rex could recognize anywhere.

  


" _Cody_ ," he breathes. A bright red scar runs down the right side of his face, but it’s undeniably him. His _ori'vod_. The man that he would've given anything to see again, a day ago. His closest brother. The _vod_ who'd managed to take down Jango Fett. The best hand-to-hand combatant in the entire GAR.

  


And Rex has baited him into a corner and pissed him off. If he wasn't karked before, he is now.

  


Cody charges at him, throwing out a right hook that Rex knows from experience is absolutely _brutal_ to be hit with, then immediately drops down to sweep one of his legs under Rex's own, trying to knock him to the ground. It's only years of experience fighting Cody that allows Rex to leap out of the way in time and stay on his feet.

  


Cody's broken through enough of the chip's programming to throw the Empire's combat training out of the window. He's pulling out Alpha-class moves now, and Rex hates that that makes him even _more_ deadly.

  


"Cody!" he yells. "I'm not the enemy. You know that."

  


Cody doesn't respond, just runs at him again, fakes a punch, then kicks him in the chest. Rex stumbles back and punches him out of sheer desperation. Cody catches his fist, because _of course_ he does, and then flips him so that Rex slams into the ground.

  


"It's me, _vod_. It's Rex. I don't want to fight you." It was easier to fight his brother when he was just someone in a helmet. Rex guesses that’s why the Empire gives them helmets even though they don’t care about their troopers. It makes them forget that they’re people. That any of them are people.

  


Rex slams his forehead into Cody's face. Not hard enough to break anything, just enough to disorient him. Rex bucks him off and retreats across the room. He needs to keep Cody away while he talks. Cody's too vicious of a fighter to stay in close-combat range, especially now that he's fighting like a _vod_ , and not a stormtrooper.

  


Alright. He's got this.

  


"Do you remember how we met?" he asks. "It was on Kamino. I was hiding from the long-necks in a closet, when you came in. You told me that it was _your_ breakdown closet, but that you'd let me stay."

  


Rex dodges a kick that would've broken his arm, had it landed.

  


"You asked me what I was doing there, and I told you that the long-necks wanted to decommission me because I was blond. You acted surprised, and I started panicking because I thought you were going to run to the trainers, but you didn't. You just gave me a hug, said that the long-necks were full of _osik_ , and told me that you'd protect me. And you did. You made me the unofficial sixth member of your squad, and dyed my hair so I would look up to regulation. I never would have made it off of Kamino if it wasn't for you."

  


Cody doesn't respond, doesn't slow down or stop attacking, but his mouth starts to move. No sound comes out, but he mouths the same phrase over and over again. Rex's heart skips a beat - he'd recognize that phrase anywhere. It's haunted his dreams for years.

  


_Good soldiers follow orders. Good soldiers follow orders. Good soldiers follow orders._

  


Rex needs something more. The two of them had met decades ago, and in Cody's state, he probably can't remember it. No, Rex needs something big and still relevant to shock Cody into really fighting the chip, then he can come in with the smaller stories later.

  


"Your general's alive," he blurts before he can stop himself. Cody freezes for a second from where he'd been stalking across the room again - and for a second Rex dares to hope that he's done it, that Cody's broken through the chip's programming - but he straightens up and continues trying to attack Rex. Rex dodges out of the way again, although he notes that Cody's punch seems a little less powerful.

  


"Your general's alive," he says again. "He's okay. you didn't kill him, Cody. You can see him again, if you come with me."

  


Rex knows how much Cody and General Kenobi cared about each other. Cody had gotten drunk once on Coruscant, and ranted to Rex about his reckless _di'kut_ of a Jedi, but he'd had a disgustingly fond smile on his face the whole time.

  


_He's going to get himself killed one day,_ Cody had said near the end of the night, _and I don't think I'll be able to handle that._

  


Rex had seen Kenobi panicking after Cody had gotten badly injured on a mission, the layers of Negotiator and General and Jedi falling away until all that was left was Obi-Wan Kenobi, staring at Cody's broken body like he didn't know what he'd do if Cody died.

  


_It was supposed to be me,_ he'd whispered. _He took a grenade for me._

_  
_

"Quiet, traitor," Cody growls now, so far removed from the _vod_ on Coruscant that night. His gaze holds steady but his voice is starting to shake. That's good. Saying anything other than _good soldiers follow orders_ means that the chip's control is weakening.

  


Cody's fighting back.

  


Pulling the Kenobi card was a low blow, but at least Rex knows now that Cody's still in there somewhere, that he hadn't marched away years ago and left the chip in control of his body.

  


Cody advances on him, but Rex moves out of the way, sticking to the edges of the room. They're circling each other, at this point, and Cody could cross the room and take him down without too much effort - but he doesn't.

  


"Do you remember Fives and Echo?" Rex asks. "My insane ARCs? Do you remember how we found them?

  


"It was on Rishi moon. We were there on inspection duty, and we got ambushed by droids. We retreated into a canyon and stumbled across these three shinies. Hevy, Echo, and Fives. As soon as they blew up their own base as a strategy, I knew that I wanted them in Torrent. You told me that funneling them directly into my elite legion when they had just come from a calm moon outpost was the stupidest thing you'd ever heard, but you let me do it anyway.

  


"They became some of the best ARC troopers in the GAR. I was so proud of them, and-" Rex chokes back a sob "-and you told me that that was how you felt, when I was promoted to ARC trooper, and then Captain, and then Commander.

  


"Fives died. He-he almost blew the whole control chip conspiracy wide open. He could have saved us all, but he got killed. If my general had just _listened_ to him, we wouldn't be here right now. The Empire wouldn't exist. You'd still be yourself."

  


Cody snarls and lunges at Rex, but he jumps out of the way. "Echo's still alive," he says, retreating to the other side of the room. "He's with the Bad Batch now. Clone Force 99. Do you remember them?

  


"They were a, how did you put it? An 'experimental unit?' 'Defective clones with desirable mutations?' The amount of legal loopholes that you must have gone through so that the Kaminoans would let you get them off of Kamino is kind of terrifying.

  


"The whole Bad Batch is still out there, Cody. They've been looking for you. They care about you a lot. I keep asking them how you got them together, but they won't tell me. They say that it has to come from you.

  


"It's not just them, Cody. There's other brothers. Gregor is still alive. He's the only member of the 212th that I've been able to find. And Wolffe. He's not doing great, honestly, but he's alive. He could gain a lot from seeing you again. You just have to fight back. Remember who you are.

  


"You're not just another number. You're not a faceless trooper in the system. You're more than the orders you get. You're a person, Cody. You're someone who thinks and loves and laughs.

  


"I've spent _years_ searching for you, and I'm not going to give up on you. Not now. Not _ever_. Either you walk out of this room with your mind yours again, or neither of us walk out at all."

  


Rex can feel the _Ghost_ crew looking at him in shock. They've never seen him _this_ loyal to someone before. They've never had a reason to. He's only like this with his brothers.

  


He's the only _vod_ in the Rebellion. There's no one to be this loyal to.

  


Rex locks eyes with Cody. Cody's staring right at him, face almost terrifyingly blank - but he's not moving.

  


"Cody?" Rex asks, and that must spark something in Cody's brain, because he moves. He doesn't move towards Rex to attack him, his legs don't give out. No, Cody lunges sideways, towards something on the ground.

  


Towards the gun that he'd shot out of Rex's hand, earlier.

  


Mother of karking _fuck_.

  


Out of the corner of his eye, Rex sees Hera lift the blaster he'd thrown her.

  


"Don't shoot!" he says. "I have this under control."

  


She lowers it. Good.

  


He raises his hands above his head again. "This isn't right, Cody. You don't want to do this. I know you. This isn't - this isn't you."

  


Cody's hands are shaking, just barely. It makes the muzzle of his stolen blaster move ever so slightly. It wouldn't be noticeable if Rex didn't know that Cody's hands never shake.

  


"Good soldiers follow orders," Cody repeats, over and over. Those four haunting words that had spelled the beginning of the end for Rex, back on Ringo Vinda. "Good soldiers follow orders."

  


He's shaking more noticeably now, and his voice starts to waver, to _glitch_ , almost. "Good sol-good _sol_ diers fol-follow ord- _ers_ follow ord-good _sold_ -" Cody's voice drops off, his mouth forming soundless syllables. Rex watches in horror as blood starts to drip from his nose, and his hands shake so violently that he drops the gun.

  


"R-ex," Cody gasps.

  


"Good soldiers - _please_ ," he's panting. "fol-follow orders - _get it_ \- good sol-orders - _get it out_ ," the blood is coming faster, he's shaking so hard that his legs give out and he falls to the floor. "Traitor, tr _ai_ -tor - _Rex_ ," his limbs seize, and Rex can see him struggling to breathe, and then it's like the strings holding him up are cut, and he collapses.

  


Rex darts forward and catches Cody before his head hits the ground. He presses his brother's head into his shoulder.

  


"Traitor," Cody slurs one last time, and slumps into Rex's chest, unconscious.

  


Rex breathes a sigh of relief. He presses his face into Cody's hair for a second, just to relish in the fact that he's actually _there_ , that he's warm and real and _alive_ , and then looks back up.

  


His face is wet, he realizes. He's been crying. Rex hesitantly lifts an arm off of Cody to wipe at his eyes.

  


"Who's that?" Hera asks from behind him. Rex startles, a bit. He'd been so caught up in having Cody back that he'd almost forgotten that there were other people in the room.

  


"My brother," Rex says. "Cody. There's a chip in his head. It's making him into an attack dog for the Empire. We're going to remove it."

  


"What if the Rebellion doesn't want to remove it?" Hera asks.

  


"Then I'll remove it myself. Ahsoka took my chip out with nothing but the Force and a probably broken med droid, and she didn't know where it was. I do."

  


Hera nods, apparently satisfied with that answer.

  


"Rex, we should go," Zeb calls. "They need help."

  


Rex shifts Cody so that he's carrying him. "Alright. Let's go."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr at elipson. Come say hi!
> 
> Mando'a Translations:  
> jetti - jedi  
> vod'e - siblings, brothers  
> hut'uun - coward, worst possible insult  
> vod - sibling, brother  
> ori'vod - older brother  
> osik - shit  
> di'kut - idiot
> 
> Y'all the fight scene alone was eight pages on my doc. Also, slugthrowers are literally just shotguns. Mandalorians are really out here bringing a gun to a space knife fight. Icons.


End file.
